Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we started the week listening to me gush about a sneak preview of Wall-E that I snuck into at Pixar (verdict: best robot movie ever); learned about a new strategy for herding cattle in Australia using robot helicopters, got ALL PUMPED UP FOR ROBOGAMES which starts TODAY in San Francisco, watched a few chilling commercials for a robotic system designed to destroy all humans at ping pong, realized that you don’t need robot helicopters to herd cattle when you’ve got cyborg cows instead, were impressed by a wicked awesome DIY mod of some R/C cars to get them to autonomously race around rooms, saw (actually saw) some itty bitty magnetic nanobots zipping around the letters on a penny, and ended the week with a video of Northrop Grumman’s Fire Scout unmanned helicopter blowing stuff up with rockets.

Oh, and did I mention that RoboGames starts today in San Francisco? If you can’t make it, we’ll be bringing you coverage of the event next week.

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By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we watched some very mechanical and decidedly unsexy robot sex, were amused by a Roomba that was dressed up like Pac-Man, checked out some WALL-E and Eve toys that flirt with each other, were vaguely disturbed by a giant mechanical logging scorpion, read about a little robot who’s designed to be your friend (but not do much else for you) in a disaster area, got some additional details about the GPS and breathalyzer equipped teddy bear, saw some seriously small robots dancing on the head of a pin, learned why teaching robotic fish to school can help them work in groups under water, enjoyed another little teaser spot for WALL-E (that yours truly will be reviewing this weekend!), and ended the week on a musical note (heh) with a vid of the Little Yellow Drum Machine doing what little yellow drum machines do.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we saw some of the first exoplanetary images taken after the successful landing of the Phoenix robotic laboratory in the northern artic regions of Mars, found out that the perfect woman has been invented and can be yours as of June 11, tried hard to be impressed by a little robot who was able to climb the Grand Canyon on two AA batteries, watched an ABB robotic arm show off its spectacularly inhuman speed and accuracy, were introduced to a solar powered autonomous weed destroyer, saw some combat robots trying to tear each other to bits in super slow-mo, learned about some monkeys that have been trained to control a robot arm with their brain, were wowed by the latest and smartest incarnation of DEKA’s Luke robotic prosthetic arm, rejoiced that we can turn ourselves into cyborgs since the Berkeley Bionics HULC powered exoskeleton is now available for preorder, and ended the week on a fuzzy note with the squeezably soft and snuggably purrable Haptic Creature.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we lounged around while watching a humanoid robot more or less successfully mow the lawn for us, heard about a nanobot soccer competition taking place on a tiny field with robots dwarfed by grains of salt, saw a new type of wall climbing bot that uses static electricity to stick to just about anything, watched a video of some robosoccer bots and learned why their skills are valuable in space, met a biorobotic grasshopper that’s a world champion jumper, were a little weirded out with some cyborg plants that produce their own light to grow by, saw a robot with a flame head do a very convincing human walk, and read parts of a very interesting article by David Calkins on the history and present meaning of the word “robot.” Think you know a robot when you see it? Are you sure? ‘Cause I’m not, and I see a lot of robots. So head on over and take a look.

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By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we spent the weekend getting drunk on robots at RoboExoticUS, were slightly disturbed to learn that Wall-E’s Eve is more or less designed by Apple, felt a whole lot better about Pleo after watching one of them commune with dolphins, witnessed a group of humans submit entirely to the will of a robot as ASIMO conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, really wanted one of the fully animatronic Wall-E robots that’ll be wandering around Disneyland sometime soon, rushed to buy our tickets for RoboGames 2008 (woohoo!), were unimpressed with how well ASIMO the robot dances the robot, sacrificed our oral hygiene in the name of abstract art after watching Brushbots paint, and watched micromice autonomously navigate mazes at insane speeds without even asking for cheese at the end. You heard me, people… No cheese required. Yep, we’re all doomed.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie started off dramatically. We cringed as we watched a hapless Pleo get disemboweled by a ComBot at Maker Faire, felt a little better watching a few more ComBot matches where ComBots fought ComBots, checked out some footage of the new Wall-E Ultimate Robot toy, drooled over an auction of beautiful vintage robot toys with their fantastic original boxes, chuckled over a new Wall-E video involving a our favorite animated bot gettin’ jiggy with pair of headphones, were less than impressed but mildly amused by a robotic card dealer, got wowed by a robot that you (yes, you!) can teach how to make a bitchin’ omelette, mused a little bit on the Pleo community and Ugobe’s reaction to our video of the destruction of the Pleo by a ComBot, and ended the week with a segment from FutureWeapons on the Northrop Grumman X-47B UCAS.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we happily watched a new Wall-E vignette involving a pesky magnet, saw some little Mobot line followers competing on a complicated course at Carnegie Mellon, pondered the ramifications of robots getting robot servants of their very own, cringed sympathetically when a modular robot got destroyed by a swift kick to the crotch and than got jealous when it put itself back together, decided to withhold judgment on the new Wall-E robot toys until we see them in person (which should happen… tomorrow), got introduced to CrabFu SwashBot’s bigger brother SwashBot2, also got introduced to Clear Cut Robot’s same-size and equally badass brother Disaster Relief Robot, and finally, chilled out to a soothing video of Festo’s AirJelly robotic jellyfish.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

Over on BotJunkie this week, we kicked things off in style and watched some video of a cute little DIY CrabFu SwashBot take on an equally cute kitty in a battle of weirdness, got a little misty hearing about how an RP-7 robot was used to introduce a soldier in Iraq to his newborn son in Texas for the first time, saw an incredible POV video of a Georgian reconnaissance UAV being allegedly shot down by a Russian MiG-29, got a chuckle out of a slightly dirty robot t-shirt, were impressed by the ability of autonomous robots to map a maze of debris and locate simulated babies, watched a live robot-assisted surgery that was webcast on Thursday night, got a kick out of a robot that looks like a little blue elephant with a little yellow hat designed to give your urinals a good scrubbing, saw some humanoid robots going to town on each other (and preparing for the future) in a game of laser tag, got introduced to the Clear Cut firefighting robot who has giant saws for arms, and wrapped things up with a clip of remote controlled Japanese robots running some plays of what they call American-style football.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we started off by watching some video of a new robotics kit modeled after a canine rather than a humanoid, realized that turning robots on and off can be a huge pain in the ass if you’ve got 100 of them running around, tried to picture the robotic orbs spotted at Yuri’s Night running over hippies at Burning Man, were not impressed by a quadrapedal robotic trash can that was almost but not quite the stupidest robot of 2007, got an update about the TALON SWORDS armed battlebots telling us that they’re still in Iraq but the government doesn’t really know what to do with them, oohed and aahed over a robotic arm with an integrated infrared laser cannon that’s used to spot weld metal, added a Cyberdyne powered exoskeleton to the list of things we really really want now that they’re starting to get produced, met a robotic cat that plays chess and tells dumb dog jokes, were impressed by the underwater alacrity of Finnegan the robotic turtle, and dipped into the change jar to buy an awesome t-shirt with 51 robots on it including The Wrong Trousers and Wall-E.

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